Stale Equip

When the cursor on the pause menu's item page moves around, the game keeps track of the slot number the cursor is on as well as the item ID of the item in the slot. These values are preserved after unpausing, and upon pausing again, the item ID normally immediately updates to the item ID of the item the cursor is on. However, if the cursor is on a top row slot and the control stick is pressed up (or on a bottom row slot and the control stick is pressed down), the item ID won't update for one frame. When this is done on the first frame of control during a pause before the pause menu has a chance to update the item ID, it can be used to re-equip an item that was lost or given away between the pauses:

1. Equip from a top or bottom row slot an item that can be removed from the inventory (e.g. Moon's Tear, title deed, or bottle (stolen by Takkuri)) and leave the cursor on that item's slot (sets slot number and item ID)
2. Unpause and give away or lose the item (item ID is not updated)
3. Pause
4. On the first frame of control on the pause menu, press both a c-button and up if on the top row or down if on the bottom row (stick input prevents the item ID from updating for a frame; c input equips)
5. The lost item will now be equipped over the slot the cursor was hovering over

Play: YouTube video

Stale equipping bottles

One exception to the stored item ID being preserved across pauses is that using a bottle to drink, dump, or catch contents updates the stored item ID to the new item ID of the bottle item (0x12 for empty bottle, 0x13 for red potion, etc. - see ⁠item list). This is very powerful in combination with stale equipping, as it means that a bottle can be equipped over any top or bottom row slot regardless of what item that slot contains or whether it contains an item at all:

1. Equip an empty bottle or bottle contents that can be drunk or dumped
2. Put the cursor on a top or bottom row slot on the item page (sets slot number and item ID)
3. Unpause and drink, dump, or catch bottle contents (sets item ID to bottle item's ID)
4. Pause
5. On the first frame of control on the pause menu, press both a c-button and up if on the top row or down if on the bottom row (stick input prevents the item ID from updating for a frame; c input equips)
6. The bottle item that resulted from the action in step 3 will now be equipped over the slot the cursor was hovering over
7. If you want to write a bottle onto the slot, then drink, dump, or catch with the bottle that was equipped in step 6

Play: YouTube video

Notes

• Because the menu updates the stored item ID on every frame that the cursor isn't running into the top or bottom of the page, a stale equip must be done on the first pause following the item loss/bottle item use. The pause must also be done in the same area as the item loss/bottle item use, as loading a new area resets the cursor slot number and item ID. Retrying after failing a bottle stale equip requires using a bottle item again; retrying an item recovery stale equip is impossible.

• Stale equipping for item recovery is of limited use because it can only work for top and bottom row slots, so it isn't relevant for the Letter to Kafei or Priority Mail.

• As shown in the video, a bottle item stale equip can be done whether the slot it's being done on has an item in it already or not. An important consequence of this is that a bottle can be stale equipped over and written to the ocarina slot, making it possible to learn Song of Healing and obtain the Deku Mask without entering the Clock Tower and learning Song of Time.

• Using a bottle item that causes Link to show the bottle to the camera instead of drinking, dumping, or catching (e.g. a Zora egg when not on top of the Marine Lab tank) will not update the item ID, nor will swinging an empty bottle without catching anything. Buying bottle contents from a shop also doesn't update the item ID. Any other action that updates bottle contents will update the item ID, including selling bottle contents in the curiosity shop or giving red potion to Koume or Shiro.

• Bottle use doesn't overwrite the item ID value for the mask page of the pause menu, so stale equips can't be used to write bottles there. A stale equip can be used for ⁠mask recovery in the same manner described at the top of this page, but there is no known use for this, and the same thing can be achieved with equip swap already.

• Equip swap is another form of stale equipping that has different use cases. Stale equips and equip swap can be very useful to combine, as a stale equip can be used to put a bottle on a previously empty inventory slot that can then be equip swapped over.